Welcome, to My Perfect Life!
by theonlyxception
Summary: From the POV of Jackie Clark. I often spent my nights awake, thinking about how my life had drastically changed. How I hardly recognize myself in the mirror anymore—or that I was living in this illusion of a perfect world.


I often spent my nights awake, thinking about how my life had drastically changed. How I hardly recognize myself in the mirror anymore—or that I was living in this illusion of a perfect world. When in reality, my life included being married to a General and being a mother to our two children.

Besides my duties as an army wife, I basked in the joys of raising children in our home. When I had first gotten pregnant with our daughter Sophie, it was all butterflies and wishes that I would be as good mother. And when Patrick came along, I couldn't have been more thrilled that we had been blessed with both a son and daughter.

And between the stresses of deployment, moving constantly, and family life—It was hard to believe that in a blink of an eye of teaching our kids to walk, talk, read and write—that our children would grow up not to need us any longer when we sent them off to college.

Around that same time was when I started to feel a hole in my heart, and my perfect life seemed to crumble around the circle. Kevin threw himself into his job, and in return there wasn't much time for us or our marriage.

Which is when perfect, started to not feel so perfect after all. I was already feeling miserable and quite alone—often in the house by myself when I wasn't running around raising money for events, attending FRG meetings and supporting my husband.

The sudden fissure in our smooth sailing ship was slowly sinking us both, especially when I found out that he had secretly been having an affair. That was when everything broke apart, and I felt nothing.

About two years prior, we crossed paths with Denise and Frank Sherwood. Their son Jeremy was about three years younger than ours—soon becoming inseparable, until we were transferred to another base.

Denise and I would often find ourselves talking on the patio, while guzzling a pitcher of lemonade. We would enjoy watching our sons toss around the football, and enjoy my daughter dancing around in the yard. Back then, everything seemed rather normal.

After that, I never thought there would be any way that we would cross paths again. Then the hurricane happened and not only was our base destroyed, but also our home.

From the moment we moved into Ft. Marshall, I felt as if we were on a permanent war path. Here I was trying to put one foot in for the support of my husband, while the other foot was delicately trying to balance everything out.

We ended up moving next door to our rivals, who just happened to be Michael and Claudia Joy Holden—who were also close friends of Denise and Frank. My husband just happened to be competing for the third star with Michael—which instantly made us the enemies. And yet, I felt as flawed as a cake that was falling apart, when I saw how happy Denise was with Claudia Joy by her side.

Then I had a motive, and it wasn't anything good. Denise and I began going for runs in the mornings, consulted on events and planned FRG meetings together. All of it not only held more meaning, but it was the first time in a long time that I had even felt remotely happy, or had a friend to talk to.

However, I couldn't completely avoid the fact that my life was still a mess.

When I accidentally knocked my purse over while having lunch with Denise, my pills fell all over the floor. When she helped me pick them up and handed the bottle back to me, I quickly made up an excuse about using the pills to relieve anxiety whenever I flew on an airplane.

The next day when we were running, I brushed off her concern for the pills she had seen. It made me question whether I had gone insane, or just didn't know better.

Denise was a nurse and I knew she was trained not to believe in those kinds of things—so I couldn't truly believe that she would just "forget" about it. My heart fluttered as I stretched, then kept running. After that, she didn't bring it up again—until the night of the banquet, that is.

Somehow things got a little blurry after many glasses of wine. Kevin and I had argued beforehand: which was not very surprising. As husband and wife, we really hadn't been getting along. Especially with the added pressure of the army being under fire for leaving behind many orphaned children, and a US citizen who worked as an aid worker at the orphanage in Africa.

So after Kevin practically slammed the door in my face after shooting out insults, I poured myself a few glasses of wine downstairs in the kitchen—then chose to drive myself to the banquet.

I figured that the wine that I consumed had only numbed the pain; before I took another risk when I stole a bottle of wine that would have surely been served that night.

After that, I lost count. The wine and I somehow ended up in the bathroom with Denise, Claudia Joy, Roxy and Gloria. I kept insisting going back to the banquet, but Claudia Joy told me that it would be a disgrace to me, my husband and the United States Army if I went back in there.

Anything between that and home didn't really register in my mind. Roxy was worried about leaving me there, but I insisted that she and Gloria go back to their husbands at the banquet.

In the meantime, I was able to sleep everything off for a couple of hours. When I woke, I felt miserable and wrapped my robe around my body. I took an aspirin to take the edge off my growing headache, and was flipping through the channels on the television when my phone began to ring.

My first guess was that sit was Denise trying to check up on me, but when I looked at the caller ID, I couldn't say that I was more surprised to see that it was my husband.

We talked about how the army had been exonerated from any wrong doing, and I couldn't help but be relieved with him. Then he said something that brought me to tears—something that I hadn't expected—when he told me that he could have never made it this far without me.

And after he had said those words? He told me that he would be home soon, and that we should take that trip to Savannah. For once, I felt like things were actually looking up. The weight upon my shoulders seemed to fade significantly, and I couldn't wait for a fresh start.


End file.
